Lucy Lawless sentenced to community service for oil protest

'Spartacus' actress was arrested last year after occupying an oil-drilling ship for three days with the environmental group Greenpeace.

After pleading guilty last June to trespassing on the Noble Discoverer, an oil-drilling vessel, in February 2012, Lucy Lawless received her sentence Thursday (Feb. 7) - and all things considered, was given very good news.

The 44-year-old will be required to fulfill 120 hours of community service, as well as pay a fine of $651.44 for repairs to the Port of Taranaki. In a worst case scenario, the actress and her fellow Greenpeace protestors were looking at up to three years in prison and a $545,000 demand for reparations lodged by Shell Todd Oil Services, which had chartered the ship.

Lawless and the Greenpeace activists famously spent 77 hours aboard the Noble Discoverer in an attempt to keep it from searching for oil in the Arctic. The group camped out and blogged about their civil disobedience from a 174-foot tower on the vessel.

In a statement made outside of the Taranaki District Court, Lawless said, “We are proud to have taken part in our attempt to stop Shell’s reckless plans to drill for oil in the pristine Arctic.

“Since we occupied the Noble Discoverer, it has become evident to everyone watching, from the millions who have signed Greenpeace petitions, to the US Government, now examining Shell’s plans, that it can never be safe to drill in the Arctic.

“Shell’s Arctic programme has cost them billions and it’s now regarded as an eye-wateringly expensive failure.

“Let’s embrace clean energy; we’re going to have to anyway, so why not do it before they cause a major oil spill in the Arctic, and consign our grandchildren to an uncertain and dangerous world?”

In a television interview after the sentencing, Lawless added that she's willing to keep fighting for what she believes in even if it destroys her acting career.

"My career is nothing compared to my grandchildren’s life,” she says. “I’d love to be able to go ‘my job is done’, but unfortunately fighting climate change is probably going to go on for all the days of my life.

“If we can hold it to two degrees we might be able to adjust, but if it goes higher than that terrible, terrible catastrophes are going to follow."